Chinese is not for sissies
Mar 21st, 2007 by Michael Max
My friend Ronnie in Taiwan has been there learning Chinese for a year and half now. As I recall, having lived there long enough to know how the seasons turn through the years, after a period of time, you begin to realize just what you have gotten yourself into. Ronnie has it right:
A year and a half, as you well know, that’s enough to 跑妹妹 and buy 啤酒 at 7-11, but if you try to read a magazine, most public signs, the 道德經 or most medical classics, you are going to have some problems. So, I am rolling up my sleeves for some more training. One thing for sure, Chinese is not for sissies.
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While living in Taiwan my good pal Jean-Paul Thuot sent me an article written by David Moser , it was found in the Sino-Platonic Papers edited by Victor Mair .
He makes 10 points on why Chinese is so damn hard.
Here are 5 of them in abbreviated form.
1. Because the writing system is ridiculous.
Beautiful, complex, mysterious –but ridiculous. The more you learn about Chinese characters, the more intriguing and addicting they become. The study of them can become a lifelong obsession, and you soon will find yourself engaged in the daily task of accumulating them, drop by drop from the vast sea of characters, in a vain attempt to hoard them in the leaky bucket of long-term memory.
2. Because the language doesn’t have the common sense to use an alphabet.
Imagine a Chinese adult who decides to study English, what skills are needed to master the writing system? That’s easy; 26 letters and assorted punctuation marks. Now consider the Westerner learning to write Chinese. There is nothing that corresponds to an alphabet, though there are recurring components that make up the characters. How many components are there? Don’t ask. As with all such questions about Chinese, the answer is very messy and unsatisfying.
3. Because the writing system just isn’t very phonetic.
Chinese is just not very phonetic when compared to English. English, in turn, is less phonetic than a language like German or Spanish. But, Chinese, it isn’t even in the same league. Which means that often you just completely forget how to write a character. One of the most gratifying experiences a foreign student of Chinese can have is to see a native speaker go blank trying to write a relatively common word. You feel an enormous sense of vindication and relief to see a native speaker experience the exact same difficulty you experience every day.
4. Because even looking up a word in the dictionary is complicated.
One of the most unreasonable and difficult things about learning Chinese is that merely learning how to look up a work in the dictionary is about the equivalent of an entire semester of secretarial school. When I was in Taiwan, I heard they sometimes held dictionary look-up contests in the junior high schools. Imagine a language where simply looking up a word in the dictionary is considered an athletic skill.
5. Because tonal languages are weird.
OK, that is very Anglo-centric, I know. But, I have to mention this problem because it is one of the common complaints about learning Chinese, and it is one of the aspects of the language at which westerners are notoriously bad. Shuxue depending on the tones is either “mathematics” or “blood transfusion”. Watch the tones on guojiang, you could be saying “you flatter me” or “fruit preserves”. Don’t even ask me about “bi”.
Westerners use tone to express emotion, Chinese use tone for meaning. When you first begin using your Chinese to talk about subjects that actually matter to you, you find it feels somewhat like trying to have a passionate argument with your hands tied behind your back.
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Someone once said that learning Chinese is a “five year lesson in humility”. I used to think this meant that at the end of five years, you will have mastered Chinese and learned humility along the way. However, now having studied Chinese for over six years, I have concluded that the phrase actually means that after five years your Chinese will be still be abysmal, but at least you will have throughly learned humility.